Connect with us

Search site

Menu

Main menu

June 21, 2013

Returning To Service After Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Sara Isaacson attended college on a full ride from the U.S. Army’s ROTC. But just three months before graduation, she wrote a letter to her commanding officer telling him that she was lesbian. She was dismissed from ROTC within hours.

For Sara, it was a matter of honesty.

“I was going to be a platoon leader for soldiers who were going to look up to me as their leader,” she says. “How can I expect them to trust me with anything if I have to lie to them every single day?”

When Sara was removed from the ROTC program, her commanding officer recommended to his supervisors that she repay the $80,000 her scholarship had covered for her studies at the University of North Carolina. She took a year off to work and try to earn tuition money.

Host Dick Gordon first spoke to Sara when she left school, and since then, listeners have asked whether she had to repay her scholarship or if she was able to rejoin the military.

In this recent conversation, Sara tells Dick that after congress repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, she re-enrolled in school and rejoined the ROTC. She talks about the anxiety of returning, the conversations she had with fellow battalion members, and about finally being commissioned as an officer.

This weekend thousands will descend on Washington, D.C. to watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert mount what will most likely be a very unusual political rally. Dick’s guest today takes us back to a time when the best comedians still worked the club scene. Also, Oklahoma farmers make the trip to the “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Washington, DC. And, the key to the boneyard.

As common as the head covering is in Muslim countries, it is often criticized by people who view it as a “too visible” exhibition of religion. Many in the West view it as a form of oppression. For the past year, 9-year-old Aliya Suayah has been experimenting with wearing a headscarf.

Faith Coleman is a nurse practitioner who doesn't have health insurance. Like many of her patients, her job does not offer an insurance option and she can't afford private insurance. Especially now: since Faith had kidney cancer, she is considered to have a pre-existing condition. After her experience fighting cancer without insurance, Faith decided to open a free clinic offering premium treatment in Florida for anyone without health insurance who meets poverty guidelines.